Viva Hate

EMI;
1988/2012

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On producer Stephen Street's website there's a fascinating Morrissey letter from 1987 and the birth of Viva Hate. It's a reply to Street's unsolicited offer of demos as possible backing tracks for a post-Smiths B-Side or two. Morrissey writes that he's done with the Smiths, that he's keen for his solo career to start as soon as possible, and could these demos perhaps form the basis of a full album?

The letter shows a hungry, impatient Morrissey, ambitious for more than just artistic success-- he also frets over the marketing and midweek chart position for "Girlfriend in a Coma". After 20 years of stalled comebacks and scorned collaborators it seems odd to think of Morrissey as a mainstream contender, but in 1988 he was, and he had a record label willing to throw serious money at making the idea stick. The result was one of Morrissey's most energetic and prominent phases: an acclaimed album, singles thick with new tracks, and a year-end surprise gig at Wolverhampton which saw him mobbed by his delirious cultists. The perfect subject for a deluxe reissue package, you'd say, and that's just what EMI announced last year, a remastered Viva Hate filled with bonus material and the Wolverhampton gig in full.

Morrissey being Morrissey, that isn't what we got. This is the Viva Hate album, given a crisp remaster by Stephen Street. Except Morrissey's cut one song ("The Ordinary Boys"), replaced it with a demo ("Treat Me Like a Human Being"), and added nothing else. No B-Sides, no Wolverhampton, just an album that's not quite the same as you remember. This mix of tampering and parsimony makes it hard to recommend the reissue (had this set been done well, the mark here would have been higher), a shame since Viva Hate is one of Morrissey's most interesting records, and certainly his riskiest.

Morrissey's early solo career is defined by its string of jilted collaborators. On Viva Hate, the first chance to hear what he might do away from Johnny Marr, he involved two musicians with seemingly divergent instincts. Stephen Street had produced Strangeways, Here We Come for the Smiths, and there's a throughline from his lush, ponderous orchestrations there into Viva Hate’s fuller moments. Vini Reilly, though, was a callback to Morrissey's roots in Manchester's post-punk scene, a guitarist who'd spent a decade making brittle, semi-ambient tone poems as the Durutti Column.

This strange mix of pomp and minimal languor makes Viva Hate the only Morrissey LP you'd consider listening to just for its music. From the jagged programmed drums on "Alsatian Cousin" through the peeling MOR grandeur of "Everyday is Like Sunday" to the discreetly gorgeous strings on "Dial-a-Cliché", it's full of intriguing touches, and settings bold and open enough to push Morrissey into recording some of his most expressive vocals. Lyrically, "Margaret on the Guillotine"-- Margaret Thatcher, of course-- doesn't have much more going for it than shock tactics: it's Morrissey’s fey venom that makes it work.

Not every risk comes off, or is worth taking in the first place. "Bengali in Platforms"-- the notorious "life is hard enough when you belong here" song-- has gotten no easier to listen to over the years, whatever the song's intention. In "Bengali", the experience of racism is glibly reduced to a subset of its surface effects: feeling like you can't fit in, which is Morrissey's home territory. His purse-lipped delivery only underlines how patronising this false equivalence is.

But that's the problem with Morrissey sometimes: the other side of empathy is always feeling sorry for yourself. He's been trailed by accusations of self-pity since the beginning, self-parody since not long after. On Viva Hate it looked, briefly, like he might be trying out newer ideas-- character sketches like the excellent "Little Man, What Now?", cryptic dramas like "Alsatian Cousin", and a theme cutting through the record of the need to move on, to let go of things. "Why do you hang around?" Morrissey despairs on debut solo single "Suedehead". Stasis-- a fading child star, or the grey horror of the English seaside-- is the enemy.

At the same time, Viva Hate held Morrissey's most autobiographical, contemplative tracks. Featuring Vini Reilly's most decorative work for Morrissey-- a minute of which is pointlessly lopped off in this remaster-- "Late Night, Maudlin Street" is a patchwork of 1970s memories that fans received like a superhero origin story. But it's more about closing the diary than opening it, a last visit to an old crime scene. Album highlight "Break Up the Family" makes things even clearer over a skinny, gawky electro-funk backing quite unlike any other Morrissey track-- the singer sounds kinder and more hopeful than he ever has: "I'm so glad to grow older."

The future promised on and by Viva Hate failed to happen: Morrissey and mainstream success broke off their relationship, and while he made more consistent records, his music was never this distinctive again. It's typical of him, and sad, that a record full of songs about wrestling away from the past is now subject to his obsessive tinkering: maybe few will miss the self-satisfied "Ordinary Boys", but there's a reason the barely memorable "Treat Me Like a Human Being" has stayed on the demo shelf for two decades. If this is now the official, canonical Viva Hate, its unfinished roughness sticks out horribly. Fans are wearily used to Morrissey's whims, but will rue an opportunity missed here.